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Day: August 21, 2016

It only took me 30 years, but what is this nonsense? (Warning: the following is a total geekfest. Proceed at your own risk.)

In 1986, I had been obsessed with the Transformers cartoons and toys since they first debuted two years earlier. As a 10-year-old, that’s a century. On August 8, 1986, The Transformers: The Movie hit theaters. This was a fully-animated feature length film that promised big changes to the toys and TV series. I begged my parents, and my father took me to the movie theaters to go see it.

I remember driving back home trying to figure out how to answer my father’s question of what I thought of the movie. I think I was still in shock. They had killed my hero Optimus Prime. I was stunned. They also killed a bunch of other favorites while introducing a new cast of characters.

It took me a long time to forgive those new characters. I was mad at them because they just couldn’t replace my favorites, especially Optimus Prime. Over the years, I found it in my heart to forgive them and accept them. (Yes, I’m still talking about toys and fictional characters. Why do you ask?)

One of those new characters was named Hot Rod. He was a younger character, a little impetuous, a little rebellious, and a little bit in the way during a crucial battle that caused Optimus Prime’s death, but he meant well. At the end of the movie (30-year-old SPOILER WARNING!), he officially took Optimus Prime’s place as leader of the good guys, and was given the new name Rodimus Prime.

Of course, new toys of these new characters followed. Actually, I don’t know for sure if the movie was released before the toys, but it’s clear they didn’t want to spoil anything on the toy boxes. As was now tradition with the Transformers line, each toy came with a little character bio and power grid explaining their personality and abilities. The power grid portion worked on a scale of 1 to 10 and measured things like strength, intelligence, courage, and skill. To add to the intrigue, the power grids were color coded so that you needed a red plastic thingie from the box of the toy you just bought to read it. Actually, you could usually make it out without the red plastic thingie, but don’t ruin the fun. Called “tech specs,” these mini-character bibles, along with the cartoon episodes, were mined for source material to inspire hours of playtime.

Since I was mad at the characters back in the day, I never got the Hot Rod or Rodimus Prime toys. But a little internet wandering over the weekend led me to a website that has every single tech spec!

It’s been a lot of fun combing through each character, remembering some of the ones I had when I was a kid and learning about others. Every once in a while, the numbers given to a character for their abilities would seem slightly off. Nothing too terrible, but not what I expected. Turns out, the three original jets Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp all had their numbers swapped around. Soundwave wasn’t nearly as powerful as I imagined him to be, turns out he’s actually pretty average as giant robots go.

Then I got to Hod Rod. And come on!

This is ridiculous! In case you can’t make it out, he’s basically all tens except for speed (9! For a car!) and courage (7). Averaged out, he basically rates as powerful as Optimus Prime. This is blasphemous! Mind you, this is Hot Rod, before he’s turned into Rodimus Prime. It turns out, Rodimus Prime is the most powerful robot ever.

All tens again, except for nines for speed and firepower!

Just to be clear, on almost all other toys, a 9 for speed is only used in the case for the fastest of jets. 10 shows up for space shuttles and things that go ridiculously fast outside of orbit. Hot Rod turns into a race car. Rodimus Prime turns into a TRUCK! What the entire what?!

Hot Rod was sold as part of the Autobot Cars sub-line of the Transformers. These were medium sized toys when compared to the rest of the Transformers line. Every other character in that line has power levels more in-line with this. They were mid- to high- but not outrageously powerful.

Let’s take a moment to remember that Megatron easily over-powered Hot Rod in The Transformers: The Movie in the midst of a brutal fight with Optimus Prime. At this point in the fight, both characters were near collapse, and then in runs Hot Rod, who immediately gets headlocked by Megatron. According to the above, Hot Rod should’ve been able to take Megatron on his own.

I can begrudgingly accept Rodimus Prime’s levels. He’s the next leader of the Autobots, and despite being a story about giant robots, there is some unexplainable magic to the story where each leader is in some way linked to past leaders. So, I’m fine with Rodimus being more powerful than Optimus. But why bother turning Hot Rod into Rodimus Prime if Hot Rod is already the most amazing robot in the universe? The numbers are so unbalanced from all the other toys, it’s like a fan snuck into Hasbro headquarters and got his own character released. If this wasn’t an official toy, I’d think it was a Mary Sue.

This injustice cannot be allowed to stand! I immediately demand from Hasbro a retraction and apology, plus the release of corrected tech specs for Hot Rod 30 years after the fact. I will accept no excuses, as there is no statute of limitations on fan indignation.